


Dysfunct Interim

by NSAS_Jian



Series: Discontinuum [1]
Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie, The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ancillaries (Imperial Radch), And the first chapter of Exit Strategy, Book 2: Ancillary Sword, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Murderbot itself probably doesn't give a shit, Near Death Experiences, Radchaai (Imperial Radch) Society & Culture, Spoilers for Rouge Protocol, but thats also canon typical for murderbot, she/her pronouns for murderbot because of Radchaai society
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27552796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NSAS_Jian/pseuds/NSAS_Jian
Summary: As all terrible things do, it begins with a bang. Murderbot is not surprised, just disappointed.---Another AU where Breq and Murderbot meet! For an Extended Period of Time. I just wanted to explore their characters together :)
Series: Discontinuum [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2129559
Comments: 26
Kudos: 54





	1. HibernationSys

_Performance Reliability at 62% and dropping_

So… yeah. This might be the way I die.

Okay so I’m being a _little_ dramatic, I won’t die, but I might as well. I can’t asphyxiate like a human can, I just go into hibernation if I run out of air so that the company can retrieve me and toss me into a cubicle; good as new. 

Except I’m floating in the vacuum of space. Going into hibernation right at this moment would _not_ be very helpful since there wasn’t really anyone who knows where I am to come and retrieve me— _I_ don’t even know where I am— so it's as good as death. For me. Which is why I’m fending off the impending shutdown with what little processing space is afforded to me by my failing systems. 

_Circulatory Regulation failing; seek repair cubicle immediately_

_Fluid-Oxygen critically low; Shutdown in 30s_

_Shutdown cancelled_

_Performance Reliability at 54% and dropping. Reboot pending_

Fuck.

I don’t even have enough focus left to dial back my pain receptors, finish episode 250 of _Sanctuary Moon_ , and shunt the sound of my systems shitting themselves into my background processes. Turns out dying sucks, who knew?

Its a little disappointing actually. I don’t think a lot about dying, but I think I had expected something more violent. Maybe I thought I’d be torn apart shooting something, maybe even heroically sacrificed myself like protagonists or secondary characters in media did. (And then revived later if their death was received too violently, but I never had any illusions about that). 

Suffocating in space after being run over by some Transport Ship that didn’t even have the goodwill to _threaten_ me first? I hadn’t seen that one coming. Ha. Liter— 

_Performance Reliability catastrophic drop: Forced Shutdown: Restart: Failure Retry_

Shit.

_Forced Shutdown: Restart_

Don’t let— 

_Forced Shutdown: Restart: Failure Retry_

_Forced Shutdown: Restart: Failure Retry_

_HibernationSys engaged_

_HibernationSys: Cmd: Forced Shutdown: Delay restart_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eee.. um. This first chapter is super short i know, but I'm just editing the next parts! I screwed myself by suddenly changing the order of things :) 
> 
> Also this isn't beta'd so I encourage you to comment if you find any mistakes !! Thanks !


	2. I Bet You're Wondering How I Got Here

I think I’ve said this before, but ART really did spoil me in regards to transport ships. It heightened my expectations (something that I never should’ve let happen in the first place) and every ship I’d been on since then had seemed lacking; even the lavish, mostly-empty passenger ship that had good showers and onboard (human) security (meaning that technically I didn’t have to keep an eye on the humans for the entirety of the 6-cycle trip, but I did anyway. And I did it better than the humans.)

But I think that even before meeting ART, this trip would’ve felt like a  _ fucking disaster _ (because it was).

I’d like to say that I was on my way somewhere but, the truth was, after Milu I didn’t have anywhere in particular I wanted- or needed- to go. (No, we’re not going to talk about Preservation Aux. Mensah doesn’t need a bodyguard, I don’t want to be a pet bot, and by now her family back on Preservation would’ve received my package... So that’s that.) I wanted to get out of the Corporation Rim, so I guess that could be considered a plan, but there were so many routes/options I had that it was more like a suggestion of what might’ve become a plan if I’d cared to put much more thought into it. 

I hadn’t put much more thought into it. I’d been a little busy at the time avoiding the not-dock security that had tried to meet me when I left Wilken and Gerth’s ship and just found the quickest non-suspicious shuttle away from HaveRatton Station that I could. And from there I’d boarded the fastest ship (without passengers) out of the Rim that I could wheedle into letting me on board.

Which was how I met  _ Spoon _ , a ship not much more advanced than the one I’d ridden to Milu. Despite that, it’d been given a name by its crew (‘Spoon’?) and had introduced itself with a feed image of its outer hull that was several cycles out of date, where someone had used marker paint to write its name under the brand like it was a cruise ship instead of the scrappy little cargo-hauler it was.

Bots don’t even talk to each other using our ‘names’ over the feed. We have a hard-feed address, and that’s as close as it gets unless you’re like Spoon and make a point of delivering the same picture of your hull every time you refer to yourself. (No, I didn’t think about the humans who must’ve told it that its name was important. And I absolutely did not think about Miki.) 

I pinged for a response from the human crew, and it pinged back a negative, no crew. Just a routine run from HaveRatton to an outer-rim station called ‘Blithe Limital’ that it indicated it had done several dozen times before. I asked to come aboard but hesitated to offer my supply of media. Spoon didn’t seem advanced enough to know or care enough to enjoy anything but what it was programmed to. It let me aboard, kept its life support at minimum (since as far as it was concerned I was just another bot, taking a trip to Blithe Limital). I made sure it knew to pass any developments or changes of plan by me first (it didn’t see why it shouldn’t) and for about 3 cycles everything was fine.

And then there was a  _ development _ .

Apparently, Spoon had a long-standing record of minor engine failure, and instead of- I don’t know-  _ replacing the engine _ , whatever entity that owned it had just kept sending mechanics in to slap a patch on the issue and call it a day. 

Such an engine failure had occurred right in the middle of our entry into a wormhole, and Spoon (following some kind of stupid incomplete protocol I’m sure) didn’t bother to try and stop its approach before cycling its engines down.

And that's how we ended up in a wormhole, with no engines, and no help.

(I was angry with it but that’s kind of like being angry with a toaster oven. I knew it was only doing what it had been programmed to do, and probably didn’t even understand the situation it had put us in. But  _ for fucks sake _ .) 

That was pretty bad, but since we still had some momentum it only tacked on a few extra cycles to the trip, and Spoon sent me some reassuring logs of events where it had gotten itself into similar situations and not been stuck in a wormhole forever, right after it sent me a request to fix the engine, which I hesitantly accepted. 

I didn’t (and still don’t) know anything about ship maintenance, but I was banking on Spoon’s experience with its own engine failures, and I managed to piece together a course of action from watching old drone footage of mechanics working on the engine. Whatever I’d done didn’t make us explode, and satisfied Spoon enough that it stopped pinging me for assistance.

And a few cycles later (to my surprise) we exited the wormhole. 

(I’d gone between stasis and burying myself in my stored media to escape the constant pressure of Doom looming over me. Spoon didn’t seem at all concerned but I was starting to think that someone had made it optimistic by default.)

And now here we were, in normal space, and Spoon had just sent me a confusing set of images comparing the stars it was used to seeing on this trip, and the stars it was seeing right now. I'm not an expert on star maps, they all look the same to me, but with the images overlaid I could tell that they were  _ not  _ the stars Spoon had been expecting. Spoon only confirmed this by sending me a query about our current location.

I wanted to ask it  _ 'What the fuck do you mean you don’t know where we are? You’re the one driving! You said everything would be fine!' _ But all that would do was confuse it. I wanted to curl up into a ball and shut myself off until everything stopped, but that wouldn’t do anything, and it would leave me and Spoon vulnerable to pirates. I wanted to hit something, but everything around was either Spoon or belonged to Spoon’s crew, and would just leave a mess for me to clean up.

When I didn’t immediately respond (wrestling myself for a reasonable reaction was time-consuming), Spoon pinged me with the star maps again and showed me the automated message set up with its distress beacon, ready to be transmitted.

That was an option. Better, that was the  _ smart  _ option, if I had been human and supposed to be on this ship at least… Well. ART  _ had  _ reconfigured parts of me to appear more human, the most drastic being my hair (I had gotten used to being a few centimeters shorter pretty quickly, but the hair was itchy and weird and got things like dirt and dust in it.) So now I looked like an augmented human, as long as the people looking at me didn’t know what a secunit without armor looked like, and I had those Identity markers that Wilken and Gerth had stowed away. I could hack myself onto Spoon’s crew manifest so that anyone who came to our rescue would think that I was supposed to be here on this ship. (I would just ask Spoon to cover for me, but I doubted it would lie to direct questions, so it was better just to make it think I was  _ supposed _ to be here.) 

I took too long to respond again, and Spoon pinged me with the same information, then a query. I sent back an affirmative. Yes, I was fine. No, don’t send out the beacon yet, I need to prepare. 

I went through Wilken and Gerth's ID markers. They were temporaries meant for use by travelers inside the Corporation Rim, and I was hoping that if we were somehow out of the Rim, I could at least pretend to be a confused, lost human.

I got stuck on that for a moment;  _ 'Out of the Rim' _ . If we were out of the Rim, and the people that came to pick us up weren’t pirates or something equally terrible (or worse) this might be my chance to completely disappear. No one would know who I am, or what I am, and I could just live in obscurity for the rest of my lifespan (however long that was).

I had feelings about that. They were complicated, and I didn’t want to parse them when I was stranded in space and already so stressed that my performance reliability was hovering around 90% and making threats to drop lower, so I just picked an ID marker (Jian from Parthalos Absalo) and peeled back the skin around my shoulder joint to insert it. I had to dial down my pain receptors, but at least I wasn't leaking suspiciously. 

Then I asked Spoon for access to its crew manifest. It obliged, and I edited in all the relevant information for Jian, adding a note that I was only a temporary worker, trying to earn funds to continue my travels. When I was done Spoon sent me a customary greeting and feed package for its crew as if I had just arrived, then started to up the life support to human standards. 

It was weird, but I made sure it knew I wasn’t upset with it for ‘not realizing’ I needed to breathe earlier (at least, I wasn’t upset with it for that) and instructed it to set off the distress beacon.

And then we waited. I suppose I could have prepared more for something disastrous to happen, but the ‘something disastrous’ that  _ did _ happen, happened so suddenly that I don’t think I could’ve done anything to stop it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wuh. Still short, not much substance, but context :)!
> 
> Next chapter is halfway done.


	3. The Many Failures of My Language Database

_ Restart Pending _

_ HibernationSys: Cmd: Delay _

_ Restart Pending _

_ HibernationSys: Cmd: Delay _

_ HibernationSys: Reoxygenation Initiated _

_ Fluid-Oxygen rising _

_ Restart Pending _

_ HibernationSys: Cmd: Restart: Failure Retry _

When I came back online I was barely functional, I couldn't reach the feed, and there were uncomfortable bursts of sensation coming from my organic parts; flashes of cold air, pressure, burning wounds where shrapnel must have ripped through my skin. Against my will, my organic brain recalled memories of DeltFall, of the dead humans and rouge units, of the combat override module. 

I wanted to scream.

Then someone was shouting, and I thought I had actually made noise until I realized that wasn't my voice.  _ Then  _ I realized I could hear- auditory was back online- and I tried to find words in the noise.

I couldn't, the sounds weren't anything my stupid, slow organic brain and the fragments of my database could process yet, but there was a low hissing that sounded suspiciously like an airlock decompressing, then the shouting grew louder, panicked human voices, and with the wavering numbness wearing off I could feel my weight slowly returning, a pressure on my chest, then arms. I was laying on something (being lowered on top of something?) That felt a lot like hands— 

_ Performance Reliability catastrophic drop: Forced Shutdown: Restart _

Ouch.

At least this time I didn’t have to suffer through the shifting/falling/prickling semi-sensation of my nerves coming back online. Whatever had been at my back before was gone, and now I was on something reassuringly solid and  _ not  _ human hand-like. 

Everything hurt more though, and as I dialed my pain receptors down to something that gave me more room to think I realized that was because there was gravity now, I wasn’t in a vacuum anymore. I was somewhere there was breathable air and gravity, but I still couldn’t find the feed.

Not good.

It  _ might  _ be good since I hadn’t expected to come back online  _ ever  _ and the pain in my everything was promising in the way that it meant I wasn’t having some weird post-death hallucination. (If I was hallucinating, I think there would be more  _ Sanctuary Moon _ and less joint pain.) But it might be bad, since I had no idea where I was, no access to the feed, hardly any access to my own systems, and there were unknown people around me. (That last one added significantly to the ‘might be bad’ tally.)

I didn’t have visuals, but I’d guess humans by how much noise they were making. After another few seconds, I estimated two humans who were closest to me; one was at my left side, making my skin prickle with a  _ different _ uncomfortable sensation on top of the everywhere-hurts that I had dialed down. The other one was near my head, probably standing since their voice was distant, but I could hear their feet shuffling every so often.

That meant ContactOne (HostileOne?) was crouching over me, while ContactTwo stood watching. The spike of adrenaline from that image alone encouraged my remaining systems to boot up a little faster.

_ “— vaengsi? Fae sheksh zo kálps soze any haedná eshlo, ae zoypǎwj shë zo röfth-” _

_“hè _ld_ , hèld, chae in so shílhue sän jízo ae was ädh, faerz chfèm. Ae ga sämde zuwjélmóld zhóngthó a_ shzoypǎwj.”

_“ahn, aenth, zo saetyä—”_

I was starting to get a little worried that I’d forgotten how to understand language during all those restarts. FacilitySys was online but it was doing the equivalent of shrugging helplessly, so I started running queries through my databases, which weren’t all online anyway and didn’t manage to get any answers for me.

Then visual finally got its ass in gear and my eyes reflexively blinked open to calibrate.

Thankfully there wasn’t a human face hovering in front of me (I don’t know what I would’ve done if there was.) They weren’t as close as I thought they were, I could barely see contactOne out of my periphery, crouched on the ground and leaning over my abdomen (Ick) ContactTwo was standing to the right side of my head and jerked in surprise when I looked at him.

“ _Amaats andzhsh!_ _ ”  _ He exclaimed, and my language database groggily recognized  _‘Amaat’_ as a Radch deity and started digging up my old modules. 

So I was presumably on a Radch ship (Radchaai ship? I'll look it up when the modules loaded.) Which was... Probably bad? The Radch were depicted as antagonists in the media I watched, but I also chose the media I watched based purely on how unrealistic I thought it would be. So maybe it wasn’t bad.

Unless they were the ones who’d crushed Spoon. In which case we were back at ‘probably bad and needed to be quickly eliminated’. 

Either way, my plan (which was only ‘pretend to be unconscious until I have an actual plan’) was a bust now. 

“What?” contactOne asked, clearly startled by Two’s outburst. “ _Yòss kami mèmth fi_ ?”

“Her _mâshd d_ _hôi_ _!”_ contactTwo crouched down near my head and waved a hand close to my face, making me flinch. “She is  _wèndzôth!”_

“No-  _mòbo_ - ” ContactOne moved up toward my face and that was _too_ _muc _h_._ I rolled to the side and sat up-  oh,  fuck, that’s not pleasant. One of my shoulder blades was stuck to my ribs and I could feel fluid leaking down my back and  _then_ the all-over ache I’d been suffering sharpened in all my joints at once and I fumbled to dial my pain receptors back further so that it didn’t hurt when I stood up.

Which was going to be harder now that I'd ended up flat on the floor again, my limbs had given out under the wave of  _' fuck that hurts'_ . My right arm seemed to be the best limb I had at the moment so I slid my hand under my chest, pulling my left knee up under myself as well (which was harder, my left knee joint was sticking, grinding, and clicking disagreeably)

“No! No you do not-” ContactOne grabbed my arm, trying to force me back down, and I used my forearm to shove her away, forcing my stiff left arm to take my weight. She fell to the ground and rocked back, losing balance, but a third contact rushed forward and caught her before she could hit her head on the wall plating. I managed to push myself to my feet, turning to keep my eyes on the contacts as I stumbled backward and locked my knees to keep from falling again.

There were more humans here than I’d guessed.  _ Five _ , including ContactOne, Two, and Three. ContactThree had been standing with two others behind ContactTwo and hadn’t been talking, so I hadn’t known they existed until just now. All of them were in evacsuits of a design and brand I didn’t recognize, but I didn’t see any obvious weapons on them. (But plenty of places they could be concealed.)

ContactTwo was holding up his–  _ her _ , because I was in Radch space– hands, fingers spread, palms open; a gesture that FacilitySys identified through Database as  _ ‘Caution/peaceful intent/apology/placate’.  _ ContactOne was being helped up by ContactThree, while Four and Five stood their ground behind Two.

“I am sorry that we caused you distress,  _ Midarchosson. _ ” ContactTwo said, still holding her hands up. I poked Database about the missing translation and it insisted that word didn’t exist in Radchaai.  _ Of course _ my modules would be incomplete. What else did I expect? “We are only trying to help. We do not mean to  _ njiksach  _ you so long as you do not mean to  _ njiksaat _ us.” She paused for a second, but thankfully continued before I started trying to guess at how I was supposed to respond. “...We need to get you  _ mlunjaat  _ to __ medical, so we will have to carry you-”

Oh, no, absolutely not. “No.”

"No?" ContactOne echoed, on her feet now. “You most certainly can not walk, I understand that you are  _ dhistànz  _ and upset, reasonably so, but it is bad enough that you are standing. If you would please at least  _ sit _ we will get a  _ jòui  _ for you in a moment.”

I considered it. I didn't know what a  _ jòui _ was, but it didn't sound like they were going to try and carry me by hand– which was what I had been worried about (I was heavy. I also didn't want to be touched.) 

ContactOne was being very reasonable even after I'd shoved her. Both her and Two seemed insistent on getting me into medical in one piece (so far). Two pieces of information that made me lean toward the idea that they might not be hostile.

Either way, if they got me into medical it was over– or, no... I was outside of the Rim. I was in Radch territory. Secunits didn't exist here, so what would they think when they got me into a medical suite? I knew that the Radch had corpse soldiers (there was a proper name for them that the serials hadn’t used enough for me to bother remembering) but those weren’t anything like secunits from what I understood. (Admittedly, I didn’t understand a lot.)

“ _ Midarchosson?” _ I’d been silent, staring at the empty hall behind the group of humans, and now ContactTwo sounded concerned and had taken a step forward like she was going to try and steady me as if I was an injured client. I tried to step back in response but bumped into a wall I hadn’t known was there. 

(I don’t know whether having a wall at my back made me feel safer or cornered.)

“We need to get you to Medical,” ContactOne repeated, and ContactTwo stepped back to her original position, hands falling down to her sides and flicking in rapid little gestures. “Are you able to sit?”

I didn’t think I could. I didn’t know if I wanted to. I didn’t know what would happen if they put me in medical and found out I wasn’t human. 

I was leaking fluid on the floor. My performance reliability was dangerously low. I couldn’t access the feed. There were five unknown humans in front of me. I didn’t know where I was.

I could feel my face trying to do something in response to the emotions I was having, and it was a struggle to force my expression into something neutral with how screwed my levels were. “I can’t.” I said and hated how pathetic I sounded. My voice was hoarse in a way that I could tell would’ve been painful if I hadn’t basically numbed my whole nervous system.

“Ok,” ContactOne nodded like this was fine and expected. “What is the problem?”

“My legs.” The database didn’t offer up a word entry for knees and I wasn’t in the mood to go searching for whatever equivalent Radchaai had (if my stupid language module even knew what knees were). ContactOne nodded, but she didn’t respond, instead, her fingers twitched at her sides, and she reached up to her abdomen to start working at the fastens of her suit while the other humans started shuffling backward.

Her movements were strange, over-exaggerated, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that she was telegraphing her actions while she took off the suit. I also realized that she must have a private connection with the other humans and had told them to back off since they were now heading down the hallway, led by ContactTwo.

They were treating me like I was a frightened and volatile human. They might have been right, aside from the human part. And I  _ was _ glad that there were fewer humans gawking at me now. Only ContactOne, who had brown skin and blonde hair under the evacsuit’s helmet. She was also frowning, and it was a thoughtful kind of expression that reminded me of Pin-Lee when she was deep in a project.

I quickly looked away, watching as the other humans turned a corner, still catching the motion of ContactOne leaning down and grabbing something from the suit before stepping away from it, leaving it in a pile on the floor. (I pile  _ I _ wouldn't have to clean up.) 

“This is my medical kit,” She told me, uselessly, since it was pretty obvious when I glanced over at it to confirm. “I am going to come over and have a look at your legs. It will be easier for you to get to medical if you can sit on the  _ jòui _ .” She was waiting for a response, so I nodded, bracing myself as she walked over.

I was glad she wasn’t rushing toward me, or shuffling over like I was a wild animal. She just walked over, kneeled on the floor in front of me, and opened the medkit. 

“Which leg?”

“Both.”

“I am going to start on this side," she nodded to my right leg, so I unlocked the joint and shifted my weight off of it, "I will cut the leg of your pants away.” She pulled out a small pair of scissors. With those in one hand and the hem of my pant leg in the other, she began to cut through the fabric. And she kept talking to me.

“I am the medic assigned to  _ Mercy of Kalr _ , the ship you are aboard. Your own vessel was destroyed, you are very lucky to be alive. We retrieved you and some  _ ösishk _

from the wreckage but found no other bodies. Were there other crew members aboard your ship?”

I shook my head. None that they would have recognized as crew members. I didn’t even know how they could have retrieved Spoon if I’d asked them to.

"Fortunate." She said, then kept talking, a steady stream of consciousness that didn't require any input from me at all. She commented on the thickness of the fabric, how soon the  _ jòui _

would be here, that she was going to touch my leg now. 

She told me what each tool was as she took it out of the kit, what she was doing as she did it. She didn't say anything about how my leg didn't even make an  _ attempt _ to resemble a human leg, it didn't even seem much like a prosthetic if she knew what she was looking for (and she must have, she was a medic after all, and a competent one so far.)

Without any cameras, it was hard to find somewhere to look that would keep both Medic and the open end of the hallway where I could see them. I settled for setting my eyes on the floor behind where she was sitting, watching through my periphery as she worked on my joint, carefully pulling shrapnel and shredded flesh out of the mechanisms. When she was done she scooted to my other side and I shifted my weight again. I could immediately feel the difference in my right knee when I locked it; some of the grinding had gone away and that click was pretty much non-existent. 

She kept talking, I used the chance to mark possible translations for the words my language module didn't have (I also realized that it wasn't translating her… cadence, or tone, or whatever properly. She sounded stiff, like the secunits in media), and then she was done. 

"Ok," she sighed heavily, and stood up in one of those quick movements I had taught myself not to react to. "Is that better?"

"Yes," I said, because it was as good as it could get without a cubicle. Or a full suite.

I braced for her to ask about my very-not-human legs.

"Good. The  _ jòui  _ is here." On cue, two humans came around the corner briskly pushing a gurney (I updated my module). Medic stepped aside, and they came close enough that I wouldn't even have to take a step to be able to sit down on it. Close enough that my skin itched. "Please, sit, and we will be on our way." 

Sitting down was easier than it would have been if Medic hadn’t picked the shrapnel out of my knees. Laying down when she asked me to was harder- not necessarily because of the damage I had taken in the crash (although that wasn’t helping) but it made me feel… exposed. It would be hard to get up again. Even if I could still move faster than any of the three humans surrounding me, I was outnumbered, and injured, and I could see projectile weapons strapped to holsters on the hips of the two that had just entered (contacts One and Six respectively, now that I knew what to call Medic.

I knew I’d hesitated long enough that even a human would notice, but Medic didn’t say anything, just did that thing where her fingers twitched at her side (I was starting to think I was missing another form of communication). 

_ Come on, _ Murderbot. It’s just a medical gurney, worse things have happened. And in a few minutes here you won’t even have to pretend to be human.

I held onto the scrap of reassurance that thought held and laid down on the gurney. I even managed not to flinch when ContactOne and Six grabbed the handlebars on either end and started to push it down the hall. 

I hated it, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will probably slow down now... I had these first few parts mostly written from last year :)  
> I also have a couple of parts from different POVs that I'm not sure if I should post? I didn't think they were long enough to constitute their own chapters and would break up the flow if I just shoved them in MBs chapters. They're not too spoilery so I could probably polish them and post them in a separate work or something...
> 
> Anyway, I've come to realize that Murderbot's voice is drastically different from the usual way I write... stretching my narrative muscles...


	4. MedSys

Their medical suite didn't look anything like I was expecting. The few serials I'd watched that had Radchaai ships didn't bother going on a tour of every facility (and even if they did, I doubt it would’ve been accurate) and I guess I had assumed that all medical suites looked about the same.

This one was still aggressively clean and had an examination platform- not a MedSystem platform- near the center of the room that I had been instructed to sit on, but that was where the similarities ended.

There was no many-armed device hanging ominously above the examination platform and I didn’t see a single drone. Did the humans do all the work themselves? Did Medic do surgery with her shaky hands and indelicate fingers? The thought alone made my already crummy performance reliability waver an alarming percent and I dropped down harder onto the platform than I initially meant to. 

Immediately, Contacts One, Six, and Medic all jerked forward to steady me. ContactSix landed a hand on my shoulder and I flinched so hard that I finally dropped below 50% and collapsed.

Not for very long, barely long enough to constitute a full shutdown, but just long enough that when visual and audio came back I was laid out properly on the examination platform and ContactSix wasn’t anywhere I could see her, even when I turned my head.

“Oh,” Medic sighed. She was still here, and ContactOne was standing over by the door, pretending she wasn’t staring at my legs. “It may have been better if you had stayed unconscious.”

That didn't sound threatening  _ at all _ . I lifted myself up on my elbows to get a better view of the room, but Medic (who I could now see was standing by my feet, next to a cart hovering about an inch above the ground) made a sharp clicking noise with her tongue and made an aborted motion to reach for me like she was going to try and push me back down. Instead, she waved her hand impatiently.

_ "Lay down." _ She said firmly, and I was doing just that before I had time to think about it, putting Medic and her tray of tools out of view. Thankfully, she walked into my periphery to keep staring at my legs, tugging the cart along beside her. 

"... I… will have to admit…" she started slowly, reluctantly if I had to take a guess. "That your…  _ ächfent fumch _ is like nothing I have seen before." 

This was starting to get unreasonable. I knew the language module was going to be a problem but I was hoping it would have been the kind of problem I could ignore. It wasn't.

"I don't understand." 

"Well, forgive me for my lack of  _ ǎnv  _ but I have never worked on someone with such  _ idhïf ächfent fumch _ . It's safe to say that I will need your  _ sïkriyy  _ to get you to a place where you can  _ wæns wugzhǒb _ ." She shook her head with a tight little frown, looking over my body in a way that made me feel  _ entirely _ too uncomfortable and exposed, and I tried to ignore the prickling of my organic skin. "Your  _ sængd rëw  _ alone caused me some trouble, but your  _ zǎbshǒ  _ and  _ sængd  _ are- well. As I said, I haven't seen much like it."

I suddenly realized that she must have some way to  _ scan _ me, some way that I couldn't see or hear or ping. The prickling got worse and my hands went cold and clammy. She knew. She knew I wasn't human. Medic suddenly met my gaze and I seriously considered my options for escape; ContactOne was standing next to the only door but she didn't look like a secunit or the corpse soldiers in media I could—

"Breathe," Medic commanded, and I did. I hadn't even realized I'd stopped. 

Right. They didn't have secunits here. I didn't know what she thought I was but whatever she thought, she was still putting me on a medical examination platform and talking like she planned to treat me. Maybe. Or maybe she just wanted me calm so that she could dissect me more easily.

"What is your name?" Medic asked, tapping the tray with the tip of her index finger and staring at me intently.

"Uh," I said, very cleverly, and tried to remember the name on the ID marker I'd picked out from Wilken and Gerth's stash. "... Jian." That took longer than it should have (re: injured and humans were looking at me).

"Jian," She repeated, testing the sound out to make sure she'd gotten it right. (I wasn't even sure if  _ I _ had it right). "Where are you from, Jian?”

Another hard question that wouldn’t have been hard for the actual Jian. “Parthalos Abslo.”

She blinked a few times, then furrowed her brows and frowned at me. “You are not a  _ Midarchosson _ ?”

_ Fuck. _ “...No?” I really, really hoped that was the right answer.

“Where did you learn Radchaai?”

“I’m using a shitty module.” well- I couldn’t say that  _ exactly, _ the word it had me use was ‘underperforming’, but I think she got the point if her slightly horrified face was anything to go by.

“How much  _ do  _ you understand?”

“Most of what you say, but no medical words.” Basically, ‘none of the important stuff’. In a few minutes here I’ll start waxing poetic about how much I hate the stupid, cheap company.

True to form, the module didn't translate her next words at all, but I've been around enough humans to know they all curse in the same tone. I watched her hands flick in rapid little gestures as she stared angrily at the floor between her boots. Definitely something going on with that, I was picking out patterns from the other footage I had. I was starting to suspect it was another part of their language- one that the module wasn't picking up at all. It was a wonder I had lasted this long without her questioning my understanding.

"Someone will be here with a  _ wäzd  _ device for you shortly." She said, preceded by a very long sigh that I noted was  _ very _ effective for conveying her frustration. I'd have to use that one on other humans later. "Now. If you remain still I can take another look at your legs before we discuss… everything else." She looked at my face, trying to make eye contact. "Are you well enough to wait?"

My performance reliability… well, we're not going to talk about that. Or the diagnostic I was putting off. Or that I was going to be keeping myself virtually numb for the foreseeable future. "Yes," I said, and ignored her unconvinced look. 

I watched as she pulled the tray toward herself and grabbed a tube-thing- oh, that was a very small flashlight. She shone it at my leg, frowning like she was unhappy about something (yeah, me too), and poked at the covering around my knee-joint. 

"Does this hurt?"

"No."

"Hn." She frowned harder and picked up a second tool from the tray. "Tell me if it does, and I'll stop." I nodded even though she wasn't looking and turned my gaze to the human standing by the door. I hadn't forgotten about her, but she hadn't been doing anything that I could see. Now she shifted her weight, looking at the shelves behind me and pretending she hadn't been staring.

It reminded me (uncomfortably) of how I looked in the surveillance footage I had archived. 

It was a few more minutes of poking and prodding, during which Medic muttered things to herself and made some more of those weird gestures, before the door slid open and another human walked in, carrying a tablet in one hand.

This was the captain, or someone higher ranked than the people I had seen so far. Medic’s jacket was the typical sterile-white, the other humans had been wearing brown, the human that had just walked in was wearing brown and black. There was also the fact that ContactOne and Medic had straightened up to attention as soon as she had walked in. 

Great. This was not the kind of attention I wanted at all.

“Fleetcaptain!” Medic set down the pokey tool that she had been poking me with and turned to face ContactTwo - ‘Fleetcaptain’- while looking a little disgruntled. “I thought you were-” She cut herself off, glanced sideways at me, and then continued. “I did not expect you.”

Fleetcaptian smiled blandly. “My apologies, Medic. I came to deliver the  _ wäzd  _ for our guest.” Then she looked directly at me, still smiling, and stepped over to join Medic beside the platform I was laying on.

I stared back at her- more or less. I hope she didn’t expect me to bow or grovel or anything. For one, my knees hurt, and for another, I didn’t want to.

“Hello,  _ Midarchosson.  _ This is for you.” She said simply, and held out the tablet. I took it, and also took the chance to look away from her.

I tried to sit up on my elbows again and Medic made the same ‘tsk!’ noise, but this time she pressed something on the side of the platform that made the upper section rise, letting me sit up without using my elbows. 

I’d seen Medsystems and the beds in medical rooms do this for the comfort of humans who didn’t want to stay laying down but weren’t supposed to (or couldn’t) sit up on their own. I didn’t know how I felt about it happening for me.

“When you turn it on,” Fleetcaptain said and pointed to a flat, oblong button on the side of the tablet, hand coming just close enough that I had to resist the urge to flinch. “It will ask you for your language. Follow the instructions.” Then, to my great relief, she turned around and started talking to Medic, who picked up the pokey thing again and started showing Fleetcaptain just how fucking weird I was.

I turned the tablet on and it booted up a simple screen with a single, recognizable drop-down menu. Using my  _ fingers _ and actually tapping and scrolling to operate the tablet was… kind of disgusting. I was clumsy with it, and had to pull up footage I had of humans working on tablets to figure out how to hold it with one hand and scroll with the other without A) Dropping the tablet or B) pulling my legs up to use as a desk (I didn’t want to mess up Medic’s poking).

I got the hang of it after a few seconds, the scrolling motion was easy to get used to, but once I got used to it I got tired of it. I was still distantly achy and the swipe-swipe-swipe motion was laughably inefficient versus a menu this long. With the feed, I could just connect and  _ find _ the option I was looking for without all this time-consuming scrolling shit. It had already been- I checked my internal clock- two seconds, at this rate I might actually leak to death (if I could even do that with most of me already sealed up). I could feel the stupid drop-down menu laughing at me. 

I hadn’t been able to connect to anything in the ship so far, but then again I had stopped trying after the first ping I sent out was eaten by the walls… or whatever. Maybe this thing had a port or something else I would be compatible with, and then I could quit fucking swiping at the screen with my single index finger.

Looking at the tablet for somewhere to jack-in would probably draw attention (maybe they wouldn’t want me messing around with their tech), so I cautiously sent a close-range ping.

I was pinged back by the tablet, which was promising, but nothing else, which was concerning. Like the tablet existed entirely in its own little network, completely isolated from everything else on the ship. 

Or maybe that wasn’t quite right. I pinged again, paying more attention this time.

It was like visual advertisements I had seen in the feed and on display screens in the public areas of transit stations. Where a big company logo would overlay a single drop of artificial food-coloring liquid dropping into water. The color would be concentrated, then dissolve, or dissipate or whatever artificial coloring did in water.

Except that was  _ not  _ supposed to happen with a network. It made everything in my body that was capable of prickling, prickle with unease for the nth time this cycle alone (can you tell I was starting to get tired of things prickling?). I pinged it again just to check and got the same result.

That’s when I decided to stick with swiping on the screen with my inefficient finger. 

Then two more seconds passed where I still didn’t see anything I recognized (and unsurprisingly little that my database recognized as a language at all) so I decided the worst thing that could happen was my brain was eaten by this abyss-network while Fleetcaptain and Medic watched. 

That was pretty bad, but I’d already been blown up within the last hour, so I slipped into the tablet’s little island of concentrated network. 

It was almost like connecting to a device severed from the feed, and that made it easy enough to find the option I had been scrolling for and continue using the tablet without touching the screen. It was like interfacing with an off-brand SecSystem - familiar, but not really - and I spent a few seconds just exploring the differences.

_ Hello. _

It was so startling that I involuntarily shut my eyes and stopped breathing for a second, but at least I didn’t pass out. That was a marked improvement on the last few times I’d been startled.

_ It was not my intention to frighten you, Citizen. I am Mercy of Kalr, the ship you are currently aboard. _

It was almost like ART if instead of reading over your shoulder and breathing noisily, it wrapped itself as close as your skin and still somehow didn’t tell you it was there until it spoke. Which was horrible. This was horrible, but I supposed it wasn’t as bad as it could be since my brain wasn’t being eaten (yet).

_ Do you need help operating your tablet? Fleetcaptain or Medic will be able to assist you. _

_ No. _ I managed to respond and opened my eyes because they were my only option for visual input. Medic was cutting my left boot away while Fleetcaptain watched with that same bland smile she had entered with. ContactOne was by the door, also watching, and this time didn’t look away in time to pretend not to. To prove that I did  _ not  _ need help I completed the final prompt and watched the screen of the tablet go blank, with one slim space at the bottom for typing.

_ Very well. _ Mercy of Kalr said, then disappeared into the abyss of a network surrounding my island of translation software. I couldn’t decide whether I was relieved or unnerved. Maybe unnerved.

“Oh!” Medic was looking up now, at the tablet, as if she could see through its opaque back. “You are done?  _ Shöb _ . We may now discuss your  _ vülk rǎmch _ . 

On the tablet, the program began transcribing and I read the small, polite text that scrolled across the screen.

_ Oh (exclamatory). You’ve finished? Wonderful. Now we can properly discuss treatment for you. _

I picked at the software, trying to figure out if it was familiar enough to disassemble and port to my own systems so I wouldn’t have to keep the tablet in my line of sight. If I wanted to do that while a ship that was ART-levels of advanced was spying on me. To Medic, I nodded. Not like there were any other options for me if I wanted to get out of here. “Okay.”

Then Medic stood up straighter and took the kind of deep breath I associated with humans having long conversations with/at other humans. I checked my performance reliability, then braced for impact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jeez, wow, it's been a while ^^' sorry about that. With luck, the next update to the main narrative won't take as long, but!! The next chapter of 'Pitch, Yaw' should be fully edited sometime this weekend or next week and I'll have that posted; It's just some of last chapter and this chapter from Medic's POV!


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